The invention relates to an adapter for connection to a liquid faucet. It involves in particular an adapter for connecting mouth- or skin-massaging douches or skin cleaning douches to conventional water faucets.
Adapters can be used wherever a definite, adjustable amount of liquid is to be branched off from a liquid line for operating apparatus connected thereto, particularly a mouth and/or skin massaging douche or a skin cleaning douche. Such adapters comprising three-way valves should be readily connectable without special aids, particularly to the end of a water faucet. The three-way valves for choosing the amount of liquid to be branched off should be designed here so that they can easily be adjusted by hand with great sensitivity.
For such purposes, an adapter which can be connected to a water faucet and which has a central inlet canal at its connection end, has already been proposed. The inlet canal is connected to a valve bore hole which goes through the adapter in the transversal direction. A three-way slider is guided, axially movably, within the valve bore hole. A main discharge canal branches off from the valve bore hole. The discharge canal is connected to the outlet end of the adapter and, at a distance from this canal, another, secondary canal which leads to a connector laterally disposed at the adapter for the detachable connection to a hose which can be connected to a mouth- and/or skin-massaging douche or a skin cleaning douche. The connection is designed as a pluggable coupling which receives a coupling plug, to which one end of the hose is attached.
The design of the known water connection is already very simple. The handling of the three-way valve for switching the appliance is not complicated. The coupling plug is easily inserted into the pluggable coupling and removed after use. The water connection can furthermore be screwed easily to any conventional water faucet. In this manner, mouth- and/or skin-massaging douches or skin cleaning douches, for instance, can already be used without any auxiliary devices in any household.
In the known adapter, the shifting or switch-over of the three-way valve is accomplished by means of a slider, which can be moved by hand between two end positions. In the one end position of the slider, the connection serves accordingly as an ordinary outlet for a water faucet, while in the other end position of the slider, water flows from the water faucet into the connected line via the pluggable coupling. In the intermediate positions of the slider, the size of the connecting cross section between the faucet and the pluggable coupling can be chosen.
In this known adapter, however, certain difficulties are encountered, inasmuch as the required sealing rings in the three-way slider always slide or rub over the edges of the openings of the main and the secondary canal when it is switched from its one end position to the other one. This causes a relatively heavy stress on the sealing rings. In order to minimize the wear of the sealing rings, the edges of the openings of the canals must not have too sharp edges. Finally, fine regulation of the amount of liquid to be branched off by means of the three-way slider takes a special skill on the part of the user. Also, the three-way slider must be carefully guided in the valve housing and it must be sufficiently hard to operate the slide.
It is therefore an object of the invention to describe an adapter of the type mentioned at the outset which avoids, in particular, the above mentioned wear problems at the valve seals and can also be produced substantially less expensively, and which, in addition, can easily be adjusted by hand with great sensitivity.